Black Creek Crossing (2 page)

And now Mr. English wanted to know if she was okay?

Biting her lip but saying nothing, she hurried toward the door and the safety of the corridor beyond, which with any luck would now be empty.

“Angel?”

She heard Mr. English, but was already out of the room, the door swinging shut behind her.

Angel.
What kind of name was Angel?

For a long time—well, maybe not all that long, but for a while, anyway—she had thought it was a wonderful name, maybe the most wonderful name in the world. Even now, memories of phrases from when she was barely more than a baby echoed softly in her mind.

Daddy’s little Angel.

Mommy’s little Angel.

Grammy’s
perfect
little Angel.

It had been Grammy who gave her the very first Halloween costume she could remember. It was a white dress that Angel was certain had been made of satin but her mother insisted was only cheap muslin. But it didn’t matter, because it had white sequins sewn all over it that glittered even when she was standing as still as she possibly could. On the back of the dress there were two wings Grammy had made of papier-mâché and then covered with white feathers.

“I’ve been saving them ever since you were born,” Grammy had told her as she carefully fitted the wings onto her tiny three-year-old shoulders. “Some people might tell you they’re only seagull feathers, but don’t you believe them.”

“But if they didn’t come from seagulls, where did they come from?” Angel had asked.

“Angels,” Grammy told her, looking deep into her eyes. “Angels just like you. They come to me when I dream, and leave feathers on my pillow. Feathers from real angels for my own perfect little Angel.”

Angel still had those wings, but they no longer hung on the wall of her room, as they once had. Now they were wrapped in tissue paper and packed away in an old hat box she’d found in the basement of the house they lived in when she was nine, and even though her mother thought they should be thrown away, Angel knew they never would be. They were all she had to remind her of Grammy, who died a little while after that wonderful Halloween when she’d worn the angel costume, and Grammy held her hand and led her up to the porches decorated with jack-o’-lanterns. Angel remembered being too shy to knock on the doors herself, and too terrified of the strangers who answered the doors to call out “Trick or treat,” so Grammy had done that for her too.

Then, even before all her Halloween candy was gone, Grammy had died.

And she had been alone ever since, with only the wonderful feathered wings to remember her grandmother by.

After Grammy died, she’d still been “Mommy’s little Angel” and “Daddy’s little Angel” for a while, and wore an angel costume on every Halloween, but it wasn’t the same. Finally, as if they understood that she wasn’t anything like a “little Angel,” her parents stopped calling her that.

The other kids, though—the kids her age—hadn’t, and there wasn’t a day that went by when someone didn’t scream the dreaded phrases at her:

“Hey, Mommy’s little Angel—will your wings still get you off the ground?”

“Hey, Daddy’s little Angel! Why don’t you use your wings to fly to Heaven? Or don’t they want you up there, either?”

The taunts had gone on and on, year after year. Her mother kept telling her it would stop, that the other kids would get tired of teasing her, but it hadn’t.

A year ago today, on her fourteenth birthday, when her mother asked her what she wanted, Angel had blurted out the truth: “Another name! I don’t look like an angel, and I don’t feel like an angel, and I hate the way everyone always teases me.” Then she told her mother what she’d been thinking about for months: “I want everyone to start calling me Angie!”

Her mother had at least tried, though no one else did.

Except Nicole Adams. Less than a week after her birthday, Nicole Adams and some of her friends had cornered her in the girls’ room. “Don’t you know
any
thing?” Nicole said, as if talking to a five-year-old. “
Angie
isn’t short for
Angel.
It’s short for
Angela
! If you want it to be short for Angel, it should be
Ane-gey,
with a long A.” Nicole’s lips had twisted into a mean-looking smile. “To rhyme with ‘mangy.’ ” Her eyes glittered with malice. “Hey, that’s what we’ll call you! Mangy-Angey!”

The rest of the girls had all burst out laughing, and though Angel felt like crying, she hadn’t. Instead she ducked her head, pushed her way through Nicole’s crowd of friends, and fled out into the sunlight of the afternoon.

And now a whole year had gone by, and it was her birthday again, and nothing was any better than it had been before. Except that wasn’t quite true, Angel reminded herself. After all, it was fall—her favorite season—when the trees turned glorious colors, and the heavy humidity of the summer gave way to cool days and cold nights. It meant she could start wearing the big bulky sweaters her mom hated but that she loved, because they covered up at least some of the things that were wrong with her.

It was also that over the summer most of the kids appeared to have lost interest in calling her Mangy-Angey, and had gone back to just ignoring her completely. Or at least they had until Mr. English reminded them that it was her birthday.

But now, as she left Mr. English’s room, the hall was as empty as she’d hoped it would be, and if she were lucky, she’d escape from the school before Nicole Adams or any of her friends saw her.

So that wasn’t so bad either—if they didn’t see her, they wouldn’t tease her.

Still, it was her fifteenth birthday, and there wasn’t going to be a party, and even though her mother had suggested they go to a movie tonight, she didn’t think her mom could afford it, so she’d said no.

Angel was about to push the front door of the school open when she saw Nicole standing on the sidewalk with three of her friends. Quickly, she turned back into the building and ducked into the girls’ room.

Empty.

Sighing with relief, she dropped her backpack to the floor, turned on the water, and washed her hands and face, so if anyone came in they’d at least see her doing something. Then, while wiping her hands, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror.

Angel,
she silently repeated one more time, regarding her too-large features glumly.

“Don’t you worry,” her mother had been telling her for almost five years now. “Remember the ugly duckling who turned into a swan? You’re my perfect angel, and before you know it, you’ll be the most beautiful girl in town.”

But now, standing in front of the mirror in the girls’ room, Angel knew it wasn’t true. Her eyes bugged out and her nose was too long and her lips were too thick and too wide. Her hair was a lank and lifeless brown, and her body—

Her eyes welled with tears.
Angels are blond and thin and pretty,
she thought.
And I’m not blond, and I’m not thin, and I’m not pretty. All I am is—

Before she could finish the thought, the door slammed open and she heard Nicole Adams’s voice.

“See? Here’s Mangy-Angey, hiding in the girls’ room, just like she always does. What’s wrong, Mangy? How come you wouldn’t leave the school? It’s your birthday, isn’t it? How come you’re not having a party? Is it because you’re so ugly no one would come?”

Angel froze as Nicole’s taunting words poured over her, and for a moment she wanted to grab Nicole’s long blond hair and jerk her head right off her neck.

Instead, she did what she always did.

She ducked her head, grabbed her backpack, and pushed through the crowd of girls who had tumbled into the room behind Nicole. A moment later she had escaped from the girls’ room, from the school, and from Nicole Adams’s taunting voice.

But as she turned the corner at the end of the block and started home, she knew there was one thing she couldn’t escape.

No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t escape being who she was.

It will get better,
she told herself.
Someday, it will get better.

And someday she’d have a friend—a real friend who would like her just the way she was, just like Grammy had.

Like some kind of silent mantra, she repeated the words to herself over and over again.

It will get better
.
.
.
I’ll find a friend
.
.
.
it will get better
.
.
.
I’ll find a friend
.
.
.

But no matter how many times she repeated the words, Angel Sullivan knew she didn’t quite believe them.

Chapter 2

ARTY SULLIVAN CAST A SIDELONG GLANCE AT THE
gleaming Airstream trailer that served as an on-site office for the strip mall that was supposed to have been almost done by now. It was only last week, however, that the framework began to climb above the underground parking lot the town of Eastbury, Massachusetts, had required. Pissant regulations, as far as he was concerned—not that anybody ever listened to him. But since they’d gotten held up on the garage—one of his boss’s snafus that he’d tried to blame on him, just like always—there wasn’t a chance that they’d get the place framed and closed before the New England winter set in. Which, Marty knew, meant that he and the rest of the crew would be shivering in a couple of more months as much as they’d been sweltering during the summer, when they were stuck down in the pit of the parking garage, setting rebar and pounding forms without a breath of fresh air and the heat in the nineties, with humidity to match. If
he’d
been in charge . . .

But he wasn’t in charge, and Jerry O’Donnell—the foreman who’d had it in for Marty since the day he’d signed on to the job last June—wasn’t going to listen to anything he had to say. Marty raised the middle finger of his left hand in a sour salute toward the Airstream—where he was pretty sure O’Donnell and the office girl were getting it on every day—then unscrewed the top of his thermos and took a long gulp. Though the liquid was only lukewarm, the warmth of the brandy he’d added to Myra’s crappy coffee quickly spread through his gut. When the alcohol did nothing to brighten his mood, Marty tipped the thermos to his lips again, draining it, then dropped the lid and the bottle back into his lunch bucket.

Couple more hours and he could go home.

Couple more hours of him working his butt off while O’Donnell cooled his in the Airstream. Maybe he should just go over there and get himself a little piece of the—

“Hey, Marty,” Kurt Winkowski called from the far corner of the site. He and Bud Grimes were struggling with a large piece of prefab framing. “How’s about givin’ us a hand over here!”

Glowering balefully at the trailer one last time, Marty heaved himself to his feet. “What’s the matter? That thing too heavy for you guys?” Ambling across the newly hardened concrete, he tripped over a drainpipe that hadn’t yet been trimmed, cursed under his breath, then shoved Winkowski aside. “Lemme hold it while you get a rivet in.” The piece of metal framing, ten feet tall and nearly as long, tilted as Winkowski released it. It nearly twisted out of Marty’s hands, but Bud Grimes reached out to steady it just before it fell.

“I can do it!” Marty growled. “Just get the damned rivet gun, Winkowski.”

For a moment Kurt Winkowski seemed about to argue, but Marty’s size and the look of half-drunken belligerence in his eyes made him think better of it. Picking up the pneumatic rivet gun, he moved to the point where the two pieces of framing met at a ninety-degree angle, and used his left hand to try to line up the matching holes in the two components. Bud Grimes’s piece held steady, but the framing Marty Sullivan was trying to steady kept wavering back and forth.

“Jeez, Marty, how’m I s’posed to—”

“Just shoot the damn thing,” Marty growled. “What kind of dumb mother—”

There was a sharp explosive sound as Winkowski pulled the trigger of the rivet gun, followed by a scream of pain as Bud Grimes let go of the framing he was holding and clutched at his left bicep. As the framing crashed against the fence that stood between the foundation and the sidewalk beyond, Marty Sullivan took a step to one side, lost his balance, then tumbled to the ground, the metal framing falling on top of him. He struggled for a moment, but the prefabricated structure was too heavy. “Someone get this damn thing off me!” he yelled as the rest of the construction crew came racing over.

“The hell with Sullivan,” Winkowski shouted. “It was his fault! Someone get the first-aid kit for Bud.”

Bud Grimes had sunk down onto a stack of framing, his face ashen, his left sleeve crimson with blood, despite the fact that his right hand was still clamped over the wound. Someone started toward the site office when the door of the Airstream opened and Jerry O’Donnell charged out with the first-aid kit.

“What happened?” he asked as he shouldered through the men crowded around Bud Grimes. He crouched down and opened the first-aid kit as Winkowski began to explain, then began cutting away the sleeve of Grimes’s shirt.

“Get this goddamn crap offa me!” Marty Sullivan howled, and finally two men picked up the enormous piece of prefab steel and tossed it aside. “I coulda been killed!” Marty complained, starting to get up. But then he dropped back down to the concrete. “Jeez—I think my back’s hurt.”